Memoirs of A Geisha
by Hisana Kuchiki
Summary: The recordings of Haruno Sakura's life, and with the man she had fallen desprately in love with. Sakura's point of view.


_**Prologue**_

_In the winter of 1986, my mother had taken me to a festival in Okinawa, Japan. _

_While there, I had seen, smelled, eaten, and heard things that I was not usually accustomed to. I had spent the week in bliss, slightly worried that this dream was going to end._

_On the second to last day, my mother took me to a geisha house. I found this odd, since only men were allowed to visit these sorts of places--or so I thought. There were also women, but they were not interested in what the men around them were doing, but rather to the woman that was on the stage._

_Interested in what had ensnared the attention of so many people, I naturally looked at the stage._

_The second I laid eyes on the attention grabbing wonder on stage, I was in awe. Dressed in the most exquisite kimono, and yet moving as if it was her skin that she was wearing, was a geisha._

_As I stared in bewilderment at the elegance of the artist on stage, I wondered how much painstaking, backbreaking, nerve-wrecking work it must have took to have had such an elegant air around one single person._

_I had decided that I wanted to know the labor of being a geisha, but I had no friends of the Asian decent. So at that moment of realization, my dream had been shattered._

_When I was first introduced to Haruno Sakura, I my first thought of her was, 'She has beautiful eyes.' Her meeting me was purely accidental. _

_She had lost her way to a meeting with an official, and I bumped into her. I apologized, and nodded slightly out of respect._

_Although I had thought that it was going to be my last encounter with the older woman, I was to be proven wrong. It had turned out that she was moving into the apartment next to mine._

_I had found this out when I was taking out my garbage, and heard a familiar sound coming out of the apartment next to mine. _

_Curious, I knocked on the door of Haruno-san's apartment. The sound had stopped abruptly, and Haruno-san opened the door. _

"_Hai?" Was what came out of her mouth when she answered the door._

"_Um… Do you know English?" I asked uncertainly._

"_Gomenasai… Only little bit."_

"_Oh. Okay… Um… what was playing?"_

"_Nani…? O-oh. It was shamisen."_

"_Shamisen? Don't geisha play that?" I asked._

"_Yes. I was a geisha."_

_After realizing that, I was ecstatic. I decided to visit her every day just to hear her play her shamisen. Yes, she played, and talked about how she had been a geisha._

_After two years, Sakura had requested a favor for me._

"_Hisana-san, can you write about my life?" _

_Her question had surprised me. I felt honored at her proposal, so I accepted. Though she had one more request for me. _

"_Do not publish this until I have died."_

_I asked her if I could record her through a camera and a tape recorder, so I could review if needed. She allowed herself to be recorded, but every time I would visit her, she would not talk to the video camera, but to me._

_She had told me of everything she had remembered. _

_I wondered why she had decided to tell her life's story, and I had asked her. _

_She simply shrugged, and said, "What else do I have left of me?"_

_Sometimes she would sing to me. Her voice was soft, but vivid._

_When she died, she died the way she wanted to. She died right when she finished what she was saying of her life. Then she died sleeping._

_Her funeral was in Yoriodo, her hometown. She was buried right by the ocean, so she would be happy._

_When I had gotten home, I remembered that I had nothing to do. I decided so watch a movie._

_I put in an unlabeled video cassette, and I saw Sakura's face on the screen. She was somber at the beginning, then angry, then happy, then pained. There was so much emotion in her voice that many times I was crying, giggling, in awe, confused, and amazed. _

_Haruno Sakura's life had sad times, and happy times._

_At first, I only wanted the tapes for the memoir, but then I realized that I needed the tapes, just to be happy._

_It made me realize, that even though her body had died, she hadn't. _

_I am glad that I was able to tell about Haruno Sakura, and I hope you enjoy as much as I did, her memoir as a geisha._

_Hisana Kuchiki_

_Friend of Haruno Sakura_

_Always a novice geisha._


End file.
